Candace Frostenson

it’s complicated

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

10yrs ago today, after finishing a 50 mile loop. I thought Santa Fe would’ve made roads safer for cyclists by now. But 😢

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

Dear Joe,
I wish I could sit down with you face to face and explain why so many of us were offended by the UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House.
For me, it had nothing to do with the UFC or who showed up for the fights. The brand you and Dana have built is a bona fide American success story. More power to you. As for the fighters, in my book, anyone brave enough to put it all on the line in the arena is remarkable to witness. Their dedication and discipline inspire me. I don’t understand anyone who can’t admire that.
And as for the people who attended, I, for one, love Shane Gillis. I think he’s hilarious and brilliant. It was a show. A once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to witness it firsthand.
My problem is that I believe some of our public spaces are sacred. And unlike many of the great powers that came before us, these American monuments belong to all of us. Not to whoever happens to hold power at the moment.
The White House does not belong to Donald Trump. It does not belong to any President. It belongs to the people. To treat it as Caesar treated the Colosseum is antithetical to everything our founding fathers fought for.
This is not Rome. Presidents are not emperors doling out bread and circuses for the peasants. The White House is the People’s House. This “celebration” could have happened in any stadium within a stone’s throw of the South Lawn. No one would have had an issue with it.
But that was obviously Donald Trump’s whole point. By holding the event on the South Lawn, what he was saying to the rest of us is:
“This is my house. I own it. I will do with it what I please. I’ll build a colosseum and have the gladiators fight under my gaze. I’ll tear down the East Wing. I’ll pave over the Rose Garden. I’ll cover everything in gold and marble. I’ll erase the names of all the men who came before me.”
The fights were an exhibition of imperial domination, not a celebration of our 250th anniversary as a democracy.
The White House is not Buckingham Palace. It is not the Palace of Versailles. It is not the Forbidden City of Beijing. It does not belong to an emperor, or a king, or a commissar.
The White House belongs to us. All of us. The person who sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is nothing more than an honored guest. A temporary caretaker.
The President is our servant. Not our Caesar.
Respectfully, Hunter

P.S. Cage match between me and Don Jr.? Your call on the venue. Anywhere but the South Lawn.

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

Nothing happens in my corner of Santa Fe 😊👍🏼

[Grant Tosterud @granttosterudwx]

More earthquakes!!
Six more earthquakes were reported in northern Socorro County Wednesday morning! The strongest was a magnitude 3.8 west of Veguita at 4:46 am. The most recent was at 7:15 am. This is now 13 earthquakes all in the same area since Saturday night. #NewMexico

[Joan Halifax @jhalifax]

https://t.co/923o3oa74V
Emptiness does not mean that things do not exist. It means that nothing exists independently. Everything arises relationally and is contingent. Everything is mutual and co-created. Reality itself is sympoietic. This insight has tremendous implications.

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

@khalil_spencer @granttosterudwx The downpour filled up the roundabout with a small lake at the Dinosaur/Richards end of Rabbit Rd. By the time I reached the Old Pecos Trail end of Rabbit Rd. (~6 miles) there was just gentle rain. This video dramatically illustrates how spread out Santa Fe has become already!

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

This AI just exposed the BIGGEST legal insider trading operation in America.

A platform called GovGreed built a seven-layer machine learning system that cross-references every stock trade disclosed by every sitting politician against the bills their committees control, the campaign donations they receive, and the companies their votes directly impact.

It scored all 540 politicians currently in Congress. And the numbers are crazy:

56% of every stock purchase made by Congress in the last 16 months was on a stock directly affected by a bill the buyer later voted on. That is 6,170 out of 11,016 total purchases.

More than HALF of all congressional stock buys are on companies whose fate that same politician is about to decide.

343 of 540 Congress members actively trade stocks while holding access to nonpublic legislative information.

That is 63.8% of the entire legislature making market bets with an informational edge that would put any hedge fund manager in prison.

The AI identified 752 active "Triple Signals" in the current Congress. A Triple Signal fires when three conditions line up at once:

The politician sits on the committee controlling a bill, they traded stock in a company affected by that bill, AND they received campaign contributions from that same industry.

Bills carrying these insider indicators pass at 5.4 TIMES the normal rate.

Now look at the individual leaderboard:

- Nancy Pelosi's estimated portfolio sits at $194 million with a Greediness score of 98.1 out of 100
- Ro Khanna made 13,231 trades across 800+ different tickers
- Michael McCaul made 32,302 trades and filed 6,670 of them late
- Thomas Suozzi filed 86.4% of his trades late with an average delay of 396 days, meaning his disclosures landed over a YEAR after he made the trade

And then there is Lisa McClain, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House. She has made 1,443 trades in three years, more than 98% of all politicians tracked.

She violated the STOCK Act twice in a single year, disclosing up to $900,000 in trades months after the legal deadline. Her husband bought up to $250,000 in Elon Musk's xAI, which quietly converted into SpaceX equity before last Friday's $2 trillion IPO.

The penalty for all of this? A $200 fine.

The number of Congress members ever prosecuted under the STOCK Act since it passed in 2012? Zero.

And the cruelest part is this:

A bill to ban congressional stock trading was introduced in January 2026. It has bipartisan support. Over 80% of American voters want it passed.

But Congress is sitting on it, because the people who would have to vote yes are the same people making millions from the system staying exactly the way it is.

They write the insider trading laws, they exempt themselves from enforcement, they trade on the information those laws generate, and when they get caught, they pay a fine that is basically nothing.

The AI didn't discover anything Congress was hiding. It just organized what was already public into a pattern so obvious that nobody can pretend it isn't there anymore.

[Grant Tosterud @granttosterudwx]

Earthquakes!
Four earthquakes have been reported south of Belen, NM since 8:30 pm, June 13. The two most recent occurred around 11:40 am, June 14. The strongest was a M3.9 at 11:41 am near Las Nutrias, NM.
Did you feel it??

[Kristin Mae Photography @Kristin_Mae]

This may be one of my favorite Milky Way shots to date. I actually love the red glow on the horizon from the wind turbine lights.

[Ken James @openshutter21]

I saw this composition but didn't really have a long zoom lens, so I zoomed as far as I could, then cropped it. Thankfully, the image held together.

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

Faint rainbow after brief sprinkles & cool scent of petrichor. Datura will be opening tonight. All good for dreams.

[Texas Democratic Party @texasdemocrats]

Governor Abbott closed out his speech at the Texas GOP convention with a live elephant. It then peed on the floor as it left the room.

The perfect metaphor for the Texas Republican Party.

[Garrison Keillor @g_keillor]

And at home I have a cushy chair that when I sit in it and close my eyes, I fall asleep. A nap chair. This is crucial for any writer.

https://t.co/KjusEj5LAZ

[Shorty Harris @ShortyHarris99]

I saw several Eastern Collared Lizards yesterday, including a male & 2 females. The females are gravid & plump with eggs, the orange spots develop when they are pregnant. Interesting that 1 female has a very golden head while the other doesn't.

[Nate @TornadoNate]

The thing about corn/bean ag is that people hold it up as the pinnacle of production. Cmon. The amount of investment in research and development, infrastructure, social engineering, etc that has gone into creating modern grain farming is almost unfathomable. The largest top down reframing of agriculture in history. this does not demonstrate that this is the most productive possible system, its merely the one that we went all in on, for myraid reasons. We definitely defied the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" aphorism, and now we are dealing with the consequences.

The outcome of Haber-bosch and the subsequent green revolution did not HAVE to take the form of 220 bushel/acre corn spread over 10million illinois acres, with water, soil and community damage everywhere

[Todd Cornish @wyomingdoc]

Life is a trip. You’ll reach milestones where you think certain things: growth, change, new perspectives, flirting, new friends, new habits, etc. are impossible. Gone. Yesterday’s news. I’m the fossil here to let you know, no. You wince. I LOL. Your day is coming. Keep living.

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

@ShortyHarris99 A place on the planet that should not be disturbed. 😘

[Shorty Harris @ShortyHarris99]

Heavy rain a few nights ago brought out 4 species of amphibians 🐸 in the Chihuahuan Desert: Couch's Spadefoot, Mexican Spadefoot, Great Plains Toad, & Red-spotted Toad. Always amazing how many amphibs live in the desert just waiting for the rains.⛈️

[Ken James @openshutter21]

I was literally praying this crow would stay still long enough for me to walk around her to get the composition of her between buttes in the brightest area and give her the most contrast.

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

These tiny sprouts hide in grama grass, popping up everywhere like desert mushrooms now in hot dry wind. I pull them up from my yard before they spread into colonies. Dog steps on them when snow covers the ground. I don’t know how coyotes avoid them!

[Candace Frostenson @ckfrostenson]

@buttler_w @AntiTrumpCanada @TheFiregirl66 He’s the puppet face of an organized movement to destroy American democracy. Lots of strings ready to snap on his bad acting as president; many loose ones to pull. She hit his whammy bar.😉